The present invention generally relates to exterior siding materials for use on exterior walls of houses and other structures. More particularly, the invention is directed toward unitary, modular shake-siding panels composed of fiber-cement siding or other suitable siding materials.
The exterior walls of houses and other structures are often protected and decorated with a variety of exterior siding products typically made from wood, vinyl, aluminum, stucco or fiber-cement. Additionally, wood and fiber-cement siding products are generally planks, panels or shakes that are xe2x80x9chungxe2x80x9d on plywood or composite walls.
Exterior siding shakes are popular products for protecting and enhancing the exterior appearance of homes, offices and other structures. Exterior siding shakes are typically small, rectilinear pieces of cedar or fiber-cement siding. Cedar siding shakes are generally formed by splitting a cedar block along the grain, and fiber-cement siding shakes are generally formed by cross-cutting a plank of fiber-cement siding having a width corresponding to the width of the individual shakes. Although both cedar and fiber-cement siding shakes are generally rectilinear, the bottom edge of the shakes can be trimmed to different shapes for decorative effect. The bottom edge of the shakes, for example, can be scalloped, triangular, square or a modified square with rounded corners.
To install shake siding, a large number of shakes are individually attached to an exterior wall of a structure using nails, staples or other suitable fasteners. Each shake usually abuts an adjacent shake to form a horizontal row of shakes, and each row of shakes overlaps a portion of an immediately underlying row of shakes. For example, a first row of shakes is attached to the bottom of the wall, and then each successive row overlaps the top portion of the immediate underlying row. As such, each shake is generally laterally offset from the shakes in the immediately underlying row so that the shakes in one row span across the abutting edges of the shakes in the immediate underlying row.
One concern of wood siding shakes is that wood has several disadvantages in exterior siding applications. Wood siding, for example, may be undesirable in dry climates or in areas subject to brush fires because it is highly flammable. In humid climates, such as Florida, the wood siding shakes are also generally undesirable because they absorb moisture and may warp or crack. Such warping or cracking may not only destroy the aesthetic beauty of the siding, but it may also allow water to damage the underlying wall. Additionally, wood siding shakes are also undesirable in many other applications because insects infest the siding and other structural components of the structure.
Another concern with conventional siding shakes made from cedar or fiber-cement siding is that it is time consuming to individually attach each shake to a wall. Moreover, additional time is required to individually trim certain shakes to fit in irregular areas on the wall, such as edges and corners. Thus, installing conventional siding shakes requires an extensive amount of labor and time.
To reduce the installation time of installing individual shakes, a particular cedar shake panel has been developed that allows a number of individual shakes to be hung contemporaneously. The particular cedar shake panels have a plurality of individual shakes attached to a thin backing strip composed of plywood. More specifically, the top portion of each individual shake is nailed, stapled, glued or otherwise connected to the plywood backing strip. The particular cedar shake panels reduce the labor required to install the shakes because a single panel covers between two and four linear feet of wall space that would otherwise need to be covered by individual shakes. Such cedar shake panels, however, are significantly more expensive than individual shakes because the shakes are still individually attached to the plywood backing strip by the manufacturer. The plywood backing strip also increases the material costs because it is not required for installing individual shakes. Moreover, the thin plywood backing strip is particularly subject to moisture damage that causes significant warping of the panels and cracking of the shakes. Such cedar shake-siding panels, therefore, are not widely used in humid or wet climates because they are relatively expensive and they have significant long-time performance problems.
The present invention is directed toward unitary modular shake panels, and methods for making and using such shake panels. In one aspect of the invention, a unitary modular shake panel includes an interconnecting section composed of a siding material and several integral shake sections projecting from the interconnecting section. The panel preferably has a quadrilateral shape with first and second edges along a longitudinal dimension that are separated from each other by a width of the panel along a transverse dimension. Additionally the shake sections are separated from one another by slots extending from the second edge to an intermediate width in the panel. In a preferred embodiment, the panel is composed of a unitary piece of fiber-cement siding with a simulated wood grain running along the transverse dimension. The interconnecting section is preferably a web portion of the fiber-cement siding piece, and the shake sections are different portions of the same fiber-cement siding piece defined by the slots extending in the transverse dimension from the web portion to the second edge of the panel.
Modular shake panels in accordance with the invention may be made using several different processes. In one embodiment, for example, a plurality of unitary modular shake panels are manufactured by the cutting a plurality of planks from a sheet of siding material, and then forming slots in the planks to define the web portion and the shake sections of each panel. The planks are preferably cut from the sheet in a direction transverse to a wood grain on the surface of the sheet. The slots are preferably cut in the planks in the direction of the wood grain from a longitudinal edge to an intermediate depth within the planks.